We’ll never have enough time for all the ‘to-dos’, at least for now

I need longer mornings.

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Seems like everything important that should be done should be done first thing in the morning. But there’s only so much morning.

The late and legendary pastor of First Baptist Church, W.A. Criswell, used to advise young preachers to “give your morning to God and your afternoon to the people.” So the first thing in the morning, I know I ought to begin my day with some devotional time of Bible reading and prayer. And then I should get straight to reading and study for the Sunday sermon or the Wednesday Bible study. There’s not enough morning for all that.

If you want to maintain good health and fitness, you really need to do it first thing in the morning. Fitness trainers agree that you can do your workouts any time during the day, but if you put them off until later, the demands of work and family tend to get in the way and squeeze out your run or swim or bike or whatever. Maybe if I do that before sunup …

I have undertaken to write a book, and I am finding that life and work keep getting in the way of my attempts to write. The best advice I have gotten so far is — you guessed it — to get up a little earlier and give your first hour each and every day to writing. You can accomplish more than you know by just disciplining yourself to write for an hour a day before the telephone starts ringing or some emergency strikes.

A few years ago someone who knows my secret loves gave me a book of daily selections from great literature, and then another with a daily snippet of American history. You can learn a lot about a lot if you just dedicate a little time first thing each morning to nurturing the mind.

They say that if you start your day with a math problem of some sort, it’s really good for brain health. Journaling is good for your soul. Those art books on my shelf keep telling me that the visual arts shouldn’t be neglected, that just looking at pictures of great art (or listening to great music) for a little time first thing in the morning …

A good breakfast is crucial for a good day. Breakfast is, they say, the most important meal of the day. You ought to sit down and eat it slowly. I like to do that with coffee and the morning paper — right after all the other things I should have done but slept too long to do first.

Oh yes, that reminds me, getting enough sleep is also very important. You can even lose weight just by getting eight to nine hours. That’s my excuse.

We all suffer from unfulfilled good intentions. We make promises to ourselves we can’t keep, and then we carry around self-contempt on account of our laziness.

Here’s the thing: when you die, there will still be things to do on your to-do list. People we call great are often incredibly accomplished at what they do because they do almost nothing but that. They lack the kind of balance that allows for love and friendship, for recreation and renewal.

We can only make a start at it all in this life. But thanks be to God for the faith that eternity picks up where time leaves off. The poet Robert Browning said, “Man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

Maybe heaven really is an everlasting morning when we can get to all those things we ought to have done first thing.